January 2017

Thank you to everyone that participated. You’ve all been giving me some great feedback on the Hour 48 post (if you haven’t yet, please do) and I plan to incorporate a lot of it into July’s readathon. Have you put it on your calendar yet?

Congratulations to the nearly 118 participants that finished a full 24 hours of reading during the weekend. I’m so incredibly impressed with all of you and totally thrilled to give away some great prize packs to three winners.

Prize Pack #1 Winner:

Lesley Landry

Prize Pack #2 Winner:

Deb Christensen

Prize Pack #3 Winner:

Janani Vaidya

Congrats again to these winners and all the readers who participated last weekend.

WE DID IT! We made it the full 48 hours and I could not be more thrilled (or tired). I’m insanely proud of all you readers, all 1,150 of you (can you believe it?).

So that we can all get to bed, let’s get some of this nitty gritty out of the way.

Three last door prize winners to announce:

Miss Ariel

Britain Callen

Dee (@Lucky_LaDee on Litsy)

The winner of Hour 42’s literary dinner party challenge is:

Hannah @ Book Freak-Out

Can I come to all of your dinner parties? They sound fantastic!

If you can, I’d love to know how this readathon went for all of you, anything you’d change, your favorite books, etc. So leave a comment with this closing survey:

How many books did you read? Pages? (If you didn’t keep track, tell me that too!)

How many hours did you read?

What do you think worked well in this readathon?

What do you think could be done to improve the readathon for next time?

Will you participate in a future 24in48 readathon?

And thanks to our friends at Book Riot, all readathon participants will be getting an email with a 25% discount code for their store. So keep your eyes peeled for that. Thank you to the whole BR gang for going above and beyond for this ‘thon.

Since I know you’re all dying to mark your calendars, the next 24in48 readathon will be held on:

July 22-23, 2017

Lastly, if you finished a full 24 hours of reading, you’re eligible to win one of three amazing prize packs. Fill out this form, including your proof of hours read, before midnight ET on Tuesday, January 24th.

You guys are champions! We’ve got three hours left until we put this thing officially to bed, and this is a super fast reminder that if your name has been announced as a prize winner and you haven’t yet done so, head over to the Prizes page, pick your poison, and fill out the form. This is the ONLY way I’ll be able to get your prize to you, so do it now. And if you’ve hit the 24-hour mark or think you’re going to, don’t forget that you’ll need to save and provide proof of your time in the Hour 48 post after this thing is all over and you’ll only have two days to do so.

Time for the last door prize winners of the readathon, and one more shout out to all of our amazing prize donors for providing such great giveaways. Give them a thanks if you can! It wouldn’t be possible without them.

Tanya (@elemenopew on Twitter)

Anne-Marie Caulfield

Tracy Ramone

Amber Shemanski

Holly Barker

One of the very best parts of readathon is the food (trust me on this). I am all about planning my snacks and meals in advance, and the name of the game is, ALL THE CARBS. I try to eat healthy, I promise, but then again, its winter, I don’t have to be in a swimsuit for like six months, and mac & cheese exists in the world. It’s only a problem if you say it’s a problem, right?

I say, combat the sneaking suspicion that food and books are not as closely related as you might think by dreaming up your perfect dinner party. Who would you most like to attend a bookish dinner party with? Authors (living or dead), fictional characters, anything goes. That’s your next challenge: which five bookish people (or animals, I’m not picky) would be around your perfect literary dinner table?

Post a comment with your dinner party guest list, and I’ll pick a prize winner at our final check-in of the readathon, Hour 48 at midnight ET tonight.

Now to announce the winner of our Hour 36 #Diverseathon challenge.

Karen (@wellreadpirate on Insta)

You guys gave such great recommendations — my TBR is overflowing with them all!

Emily Drake

Kris Wiley

Kristen M. (@webereading on Twitter)

CameG

A reading wizard! No, but Siriusly. (How many of you are reading HP for this readathon? I bet it’s a lot!)

We’ve got just under 10 hours to go, and things are getting crazy up in here. There’s been a lot of wonderful chatter, some very hardcore reading, and participants from all over the world, some of whom are already done with their readathons.

You can still post your diverse and #ownvoices recommendations over in Hour 36 for a chance to win.

For those of you still with me, here are three more prize winners:

Heather Frase

Sarah (@saguarosally on Litsy)

Michelle Sorensen

Today is the start of #Diverseathon, a week-long readathon that encourages you to read books by…you guessed it…diverse authors, particularly focusing on #ownvoice. If you’re not familiar with it, #ownvoices describes books written by authors that identify with the same marginalized group as the protagonists that they’re writing. This could include authors that identify as and are writing characters that are POCs, disabled, LGBTQ+, non-cisgender, etc.

The intention is two-fold: 1) reading #ownvoices books sends a message to the publishing community (which is traditionally, white, able-bodied, straight, and cisgender) that these books have audiences and encourage them to publish more of them, and 2) reading about characters from marginalized groups expands your own awareness of diversity and empathy, something I think we can all benefit from.

So this hour’s challenge is to post a comment with your favorite #ownvoices recommendations, or if you have a photo of your recommendations, post a comment with a link to that photo. Give your fellow readers some suggestions for diverse books, and think about joining #diverseathon this week.

Here are a selection of diverse and #ownvoices titles from my shelves:

What’s on your list? Let me know below!

The winner of our Hour 30 challenge (who not only posted a photo of rainbow books, but all books featuring LGBTQ characters too!) is:

rezgirlreads

Thanks to your amazing rainbow photos, I’m donating $78 to the Human Rights Campaign. And Jenna and Rachel are matching that amount! So the campaign will be getting $234 total. Great job, everyone!

Here are three more door prize winners, just to say thanks:

Gayan Hutchinson

Nikki Yager

Sammantha Harvey

Hey. Hey you there. I see those sleepy eyes. Why not put your book down, plug some earphones in, turn on an audiobook, and go take a walk? Seriously. It’ll help. Or if it’s too cold or snowy where you are (you Aussies, shut up, I don’t want to hear about your summer weather right now. You either, Californians), do your very best sun salutation and get the blood flowing. Go now, we’ll all still be here when you get back.